Monthly Archives: December 2012

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Like this:

I was fortunate enough to attend an Interesting Seminar organized by NHRD Mumbai Chapter about “HR & Social Media – What more can you do?”. There were 16 eminent speakers who are all set to share their views on the topic of HR and Social Media. Well, gone are the days when people used to debate about Social Media’s Power and question it. Now the focus is moving towards how can companies, brands and individuals make the most of it. Coming back to the Seminar, the Session was divided in four sections. Each section had 3 speakers and one chairperson moderating the discussions.

Normally one would assume Manufacturing Companies to be a bit soft about Social Media. But that was not that case when Mr Prince Augustin – AVP, Mahindra & Mahindra started sharing about how Mahindra is working on Employer Branding. The Buzz word during this session was “MahindraRise”, and how their organization encourages innovation and creativity. He also spoke about their interesting page on Facebook – “Mahindra War Room“. For recruiters War Room is all about meetings, numbers, weekend drives. Anyways jokes apart, it was interesting to find out that an Auto Company being active on Social Networking Sites. Here is an interesting video about Mahindra – Employee Value Proposition.

The next speaker Mr.Rajan Sinha, CEO of My Parichay did end up creating a lot of debate when he mentioned “60% of Job Seekers are only on Facebook” and “65% of folks likely to use FB over LinkedIn for the next job search”. Well, may be the Facebook thing works for a certain companies, and for some it does not. Well the debate can go on and on. Soon the discussion got a bit interesting when Statistics took over the discussion. 15 million, 10 million, the numbers were just zipping across the room. But all said and done, it’s not only about the numbers, it’s also about which Social Networking Platform works for you and how you use it to engage with your customers.

The next speaker was an Entrepreneur, a Social Media Consultant, a Blogger aka 27 yrs old Rajiv Dingra . He took the session to a whole new level when he said “Brands can’t broadcast anymore. You have to be ready to engage, converse and LISTEN”. This was good enough to make the audience clap and wait for more such interesting statements. The next one was “Social Media being just another medium to create Employer Brand” Well I completely agree with this. Social Media cannot be a solution to all your problems. He also spoke about Power of Youtube and how Companies can make the most of it.

The next set of panellist were also power-packed, which included the likes of Gautam Ghosh – Social Business and HR Consultant , Anand Pillai – Chief Learning Officer, Reliance and K Sudeep – Head Talent Acquisition, TCS. Anand Pillai mentioned an interesting quote “In today’s world none of us can have a private life'” Well, this is so true. Facebook is a place where we wish our friends, share B’day pics, party pics and the list is endless. He mentioned some interesting things such as “The next stage is also about getting into structured collaboration using social media” and “It’s not just about retweeting, but about how people are building a conversation”. Soon after this K Sudeep shared an interesting stuff from TCS’s campus connect platform. He mentioned that “Transparency is key when it comes to Campus Connect programs”. Soon it was time for Gautam Ghosh to take over the discussion. He spoke about changing embedded behaviours to embrace the connected, networked world. He did also share about how Capgemini uses #Yammer. It was good to hear a lot of discussion about Yammer at the Seminar and how companies are using it. Gautam soon spoke about the famous Dell Hell story, how IBM and CTS are encouraging internal blogging and how information is being shared within the company. And finally he also spoke about how Coursera is evolving careers and how they are into providing training sessions.. FREE.

In the third session, Indraneel Ganguli – Sr VP- Marketing & Communications, Mahindra Satyam spoke about how they managed to rise back after the fall of Satyam as a Brand. He also mentioned about their association with FIFA. It was surely a proud moment to see an Indian Brand at a Global Sporting Event. He made a valid point “If you know your purpose, you’ll figure out a way to handle Social Media” and “HR doesn’t even sneeze without a framework”. I’m sure that most of you would agree 😉 The next speaker, Colin Mendes spoke about 11 vibrant HR online communities within the TATA. Well the Tata group is connected with its 3300+ HR employees via social technology to enable knowledge sharing, industry practices and communication. The next speaker Hareesh Tibrewala – Joint CEO, Social Wavelength mentioned that we need to learn to tap the collective intelligence of the internal communities. He believes that the onus must be in creating chaos in the organization and Order / structure would emerge from it. Do you agree !!Mr Kamal Karanth, MD of Kelly Services did start with the example of the first social media war between Israel and Gaza. All he was trying to showcase the power of Social Media. Well, I personally dont think that was the best example to quote at this event. Let’s move on 😉

The final session was about “HR re-fresh and Employee Insights through Social Media. Well by this time the audience was bombarded with lots of data and stats. Some of the stats were repeated almost four times (Watch this video – Did you know). Well such things bound to happen during day long sessions. Soon Sarang Brahme from Capgemini was out with some interesting examples as to how Social Media can help HR professionals. He talked about how as an HR you can create a Mood-O-Meter for your employees and about their stint with TechGig.

All in all, although some of the points were repeated during the session, overall it was an amazing seminar. To have 16 industry experts on Social Media at the seminar made the event even more interesting. And to personally meet them and ask questions was even more special. Well, there were many things that one can learn from such sessions, but most important thing is to have passion for Social Media and keep innovating. As always looking forward to your views and feedback about this flashback.